Tom Baker stars in John Lloyd's lost Doctor Who adventure, The Doomsday Contract (webcast)

This topic might have a better name.

Change to “Behind the Lost Story!” as that’s clearly the proper title while the other feels more like a description

Talk about it here.

Tom Baker stars in John Lloyd's lost Doctor Who adventure, The Doomsday Contract
Main character(s):	John Lloyd
Featuring:	Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, "Fourth Doctor"
Main setting:	Five Hundred Year Diary
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Release details
Genre:	Comedy, science fiction
Premiere broadcast:	17 March 2021
Full video
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Tom Baker stars in John Lloyd's lost Doctor Who adventure, The Doomsday Contract, also titled Behind the Lost Story! by the BBC, was a webcast produced by Big Finish Productions, promoting the release of The Doomsday Contract. It was styled to be an homage to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV series, and the story was told from the perspective of the Doctor's Five Hundred Year Diary.

The story was also a minor crossover with the continuity of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as Vogsphere Inc. is mentioned briefly to have the trademark to Earth.

Plot

A recording plays of a man summarising the information recorded in the Doctor's Five Hundred Year Diary concerning The Doomsday Contract.

According to it, it was once a man, John Lloyd, who worked with Douglas Adams on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Not long after, Douglas became a script editor on Doctor Who, which prompted Lloyd to submit a story treatment entitled The Doomsday Contract. Lloyd toiled over many redrafts of the script, but it fell through and never made it television.

43 years later, the "remarkable" company Big Finish adapts The Doomsday Weapon into a "full cast audio version". It is a massive success.

As the camera pans away, it is revealed that it is an astronaut drifting in the void of space who has been listening to the recording. He lets go of the device as it goes.

Cast

• Nicholas Briggs - Narrator/The Doctor

Characters

• Astronaut
• The Doctor
• John Lloyd
• Douglas Adams
• Tom Baker
• Lalla Ward
• John Leeson
• Nev Fountain
• Julian Wadham

Worldbuilding

• The Five Hundred Year Diary contains a list of the James Bond films in order.
• John Lloyd was not the professional tennis player of the same name.
• John Lloyd writes additional material for the Radio 4 series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was Douglas Adams who requested John's help.
• Pirate Radio 4, Radio Free Skaro, Necros FM, Radio West, Radio Active, The Pirate Radio Planet, and LIVE 34 are media outlets.
• The Cosmegalon Corporation's logo appears by permission from Cosmegalon Corporation, and Earth is trademarked by Vogsphere Inc..
• The Doctor has expertise in telebiogenesis, conkers, gravitic anomalisation, having fun, the Mikado, Nothern Soul, and The Beano.
• Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Reddit are seen in a non-spoiler review of Big Show Everyone's Into.
• Professional tennis is filled with towelling and grunting.
• Lloyd began spearheading every Earth comedy over the next three decades, including Blackadder, Spitting Image, and Not the Nine O'Clock News.
• The Mutter's Spiral, Chloris, Frogstar World B, Bonarcha Anarda, Canis Minor RA 7h 55m 17.31s D° 17. 9.68", and Eden are seen.

The Doctor Who series

• The Doomsday Contract is about the Doctor having to defend Earth from the Cosmegalon Corporation. Further details are prohibited due to spoilers.
• However, it was known at the time that there were courtroom scenes, the TARDIS in peril, and "the smaller-than-you-would-expect killers from another dimension".
• The full cast audio version of The Doomsday Contract stars Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, John Leeson, and Julian Wadham, and is written by John Lloyd and Nev Fountain.
• Big Finish is the most successful creator to come out of Mutter's Spiral.

Notes

• Nicholas Briggs spends most of the webcast reading extracts of the Doctor's Five Hundred Year Diary aloud. Although Briggs had portrayed at least one N-Space incarnation of the Doctor in the past, the webcast left it unclear whether the voice is supposed to be the Doctor's; notably, in its opening, he speaks about "the Doctor's Five Hundred Year Diary" in the first person, although writing about "the Doctor" in the first person is a trait Steven Moffat gave to the Doctor his Day of the Doctor novelisation.